Many business entities, firms, and other organizations in a variety of industry sectors utilize electronic documents, forms, and records in their communications and transactions with individuals and other entities. Often, these electronic instruments require signatures or other endorsements in order to have proper effect, or in order to conform to legal requirements, internal policies, or other protocols. Receiving the necessary endorsements, particularly when required signatories or endorsers are unavailable or disparately located, can be challenging.
In response to this need, some services have developed solutions with the aim of facilitating the sending and receiving of electronic endorsement requests and endorsed documents within a computer environment. For example, services have been developed which base the receiving and sending of endorsable documents on a potential endorser's email address, as provided by the party requesting the endorsement.
Although such services have been beneficial in facilitating the receipt of needed endorsements, there remains significant room for further technological improvement. A particular challenge to obtaining endorsements of electronic instruments is authentication of the endorsing party's identity. Prior solutions must assume that an email address to which the electronic instrument is sent corresponds to and is accessible by the intended endorser, and is not accessible by others. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and in any event, may be difficult to prove satisfactorily if the validity of the endorsement is later questioned.